You can find more information about RSS from the following links.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

http://www.whatisrss.com/.

Now let’s start writing code creating a Basic RSS Reader. So first We need two things to create RSS Reader. A RSS Entity class which hold properties for RSS and Another method which populate IEnumerable of particular RSS Class. We are creating this example with ASP.NET So I have create One Model class called RSS Like following.

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Xml.Linq;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

namespace CodeSimplified.Models
{
public class Rss
{
 public string Link { get; set; }
 public string Title { get; set; }
 public string Description { get; set; }
}
}

Now our entity class is ready. Now we need a class and a method which will return IEnumerable of RSS Class. So I have created a Static Class RSS Reader which has “GetRSSFeed” Method which return RSS Feeds like following.

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Xml.Linq;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

namespace CodeSimplified.Models
{
public class RssReader
{
 private static string _blogURL = "http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/DotNetJalps";
 public static IEnumerable<Rss> GetRssFeed()
 {
     XDocument feedXml = XDocument.Load(_blogURL);
     var feeds = from feed in feedXml.Descendants("item")
                 select new Rss
                 {
                     Title = feed.Element("title").Value,
                     Link = feed.Element("link").Value,
                     Description = Regex.Match(feed.Element("description").Value, @"^.{1,180}\b(?<!\s)").Value
                 };
     return feeds;
 }
}
}

As you can see in above code. I am loading RSS feed with XDcoument Class with my Blog RSS feed URL and Then I am populating RSS Class Enumerable with the help of the Linq-To-XML. Now We are ready with Our Model classes so Now it’s time to Add ActionResult in Home Controller. So I have added Action Result which return View with RSS IEnumerable like following.

public ActionResult RssReader()
{
return View(CodeSimplified.Models.RssReader.GetRssFeed());
}

Now everything is ready. So its time to create a view. So I have created strongly typed view for RSS Model class like following.

@model IEnumerable<CodeSimplified.Models.Rss>

@{
ViewBag.Title = "RssReader";
}

<h2>RssReader</h2>

<p>
@Html.ActionLink("Create New", "Create")
</p>
<table>
<tr>
 <th>
     Title
 </th>
 <th>
     Description
 </th>
 <th>
     Link
 </th>

</tr>

@foreach (var item in Model) {
<tr>
 <td>
     <a href="@item.Link" target="_blank">@Html.Encode(item.Title)</a>
 </td>
 <td>
    @System.Web.HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(item.Description)

  </td>
  <td>
     <a href="@item.Link" target="_blank">More</a>
 </td>
</tr>
}

</table>

Let's run application via pressing F5 and Following is the output as expected.

So that’s it. Isn’t that cool? With the few lines of code we have created a Basic RSS Reader. Hope you like it. Stay tuned for more.. Till then Happy Programming..